15 March 2010

SARUM ... 1549

Oh dear ... yet again the dread word "Sarum" has been waggled around over the prospect of Ordinariate liturgical revision. I will risk the wrath of the Pastor of the Adur Valley by expressing a sense of horror.

I am capable of juggling with the EF in Latin, the EF in English, the OF in Latin, the OF in English, and of leaping in mid-circus from an ICEL horse to a Common Worship one. 1662 holds no terrors for me. Nor does the imminent New ICEL.

Have I really got to add another option to all this?

And I'm even less keen when 1549 raises its ugly head. Dix demonstrated conclusively that Cranmer was very heterodox; McCullough proved the same without apparently being aware that Dix had got in decades before him. 1549 made the common folk of England rise in rebellion; Cranmer's foreign friends persuaded him that it was, from their point of view, flawed, and so it was soon replaced by the rite which (apart from minor changes) has had statutory authority ever since. 1549 must have been the most short-lived liturgy in Anglican history; nobody loved it, nobody wanted it, and I don't want it now.

11 comments:

Dix lays great weight on the importance of CUSTOM and the CONTINUATION OF PRACTICE in the whole business of deciding what constitutes "traditional" Liturgy.

Let's not make the make the mistake, please, of dragging up things out of historical documents (e.g. 1549) without referring FIRST to those things which have ALWAYS BEEN AND REMAIN TO THIS DAY in continuous use! Otherwise we’re doing a bit of a sham.

Rather than concoct things afresh with a FALSE veneer of "tradition" the Ordinariate should use THAT WHICH IS ALREADY THERE. So pray the Divine Office using the EXISTING Roman or BCP forms AS THEY STAND, with any adaptations made only as and when the genuine need arises (new feasts etc.; such step-by-step, organic growth is part and parcel of a Church that neither fossilises nor engages in revolution).

The same goes for Holy Mass - just use the OF Form, but with the (optional) addition of those Anglican practices which, at least partly through CUSTOM, ARE CURRENTLY DONE in many Traditional parishes (Collect for Purity; Peace done before the Offertory, responses at the Fraction, BCP Blessing, etc.)Or else use that sadly rare beast the English Missal - the EF form in English - again, something which, in a lucky few parishes, is CURRENT CUSTOM. Or, seeing that the BCP Mass is still used among some Traditional Anglicans, use that Rite in a way the follows ACTUAL CUSTOM in those places (with adaptations, naturally, to bring it into line with Catholic doctrine; e.g. bits of the Roman Canon added to the Pr. of Consecration).

'As to the 1549 rite’s EP I have never been able to understand its attraction for some Anglo-Catholics. I accept the reading of Cranmer’s theology underlying that prayer as fundamentally Reformed (in the Swiss sense) that has been advanced by Anglican scholars such as Dom Gregory Dix (1901-1952) and Professor Edward Craddock Ratcliff (1896-1967) — the former a well-known Anglican Benedictine monk and Anglo-Papalist, the latter the holder of various academic posts in Cambridge, Oxford and London, culminating as Regius Professor of Divinity at Cambridge, and who was on the verge of entering the Orthodox Church at the time of his death — even if expressed in the most ambiguous of ways and in very “traditional,” that is, “Western-Catholic-looking” — forms. An EP of such an ambivalent, if not heretical, nature would certainly not be suitable for Catholic use. The 1549 EP is also, very clearly, an attempt at “reforming” the Roman Canon, the traditional and unique EP of the whole Western Church for centuries before the Sixteenth Century, save in the Mozarabic Rite, as well as (until the time of the post-Vatican II “reforms”) the unique EP of the Roman Church, and it seems to be that an EP conceived with the presumption of setting to right the presumed errors of the Church of Rome, the prima sedes and mater et magistra of all churches, is to act very much as Ham did towards his father, Noah, and with even less occasion to do so ...'

Having initially swallowed the argument for liturgical renewal because it seemed to rest on such solid scholarly and ecumenical ground, I am now very much in your camp, Father, in wishing to avoid any untimely births or exhumations. I wonder how 1662 is going to fare in all this. Dix's analysis of 1549 and 1552 has been a source of no small anxiety for me in that department. I have been rehabilitated to a great extent, however, by the estimable Dr Nicholas Armitage over at Comfortable Words, whose reading of the BCP through the lens of the Divines of the 17th and 18th centuries has afforded me a quiet conscience at 1662 Communions.

Now that the Canadian branch of the Traditional Anglican Communion has formally requested an Ordinariate here in Canada, I will be very interested to see whether they will continue to use, as they currently do, the Canadian Book of Common Prayer of 1962 (online courtesy of the PB Society). This revision took the 1918 Canadian book in a rather more Catholic direction, and its Eucharist has a family resemblance to the Deposited Book of 1928. The extent to which it is allowed to remain as it is will be instructive (though I wouldn't be complaining if they decided to go for broke with the Roman Canon). Whatever happens, I do hope that the traditional Eucharistic Lectionary will be retained, unlike in the current American Anglican Use. Summorum Pontificum has made it easier to argue that the new Roman Lectionary (with its Revised siblings), impressive and commendable though it may be, need not force the extinction of another lectionary that has seen centuries of continuous use.

Fr H., you've raised the crux of the issue before: Cranmer's Canon (not that he'd have liked it called that). Looking at the old BDW, it basically took over the 1979 US BCP's Eucharistic liturgy, modified a few bits here and there, and (in)famously made three main changes: it insisted on the modern Roman lectionary (boo!) and "Preparation of the Gifts" (hmmm), and permitted only the Roman Canon or another modern Roman E.P.

Can and should Cranmer's Canon, as tweaked and catholicized in various different Anglican provinces, be adopted after still more modifications, or should the Roman Canon simply be put in its place, or should some new composition be admitted?

In the Canadian parish to which I belong we celebrated the liturgy of Candlemas according to the Sarum Rite, (similar to what Pastor in Valle did) just this year. It is a splendid Rite with truly beautiful formulae. It would need updating which is certainly problematic but it seems appropriate to make the effort when healing the schism by which this treasure was suppressed.

The only other reasonable alternative I see is the English (or Anglican) Missal. To this, outside the Mass, could be added other prayers and devotions from the BCP including most especially, Evensong

The OF is pretty thin gruel and the English, even in the new translations is inferior. What little I have seen of the Anglican Use seems to me to be a bit of a hodge podge with both the old and new English used. Also, from what patrimony has someone derived the practice of the priest wearing the cope for the synaxis of the Mass?

I look for the use of subdeacons at High Mass and the use of the full pre-vatican II Pontificals by prelates as a sign that the liturgy in use is not scarred by the hermenuetic of disruption. One can use Latin and face eastward in the OF but essentialy what one is using has a tradition dating back to 1970.

Certainly the Scottish (1929 plus 1764, still superior in some respects) is the best. However, it is said that the long Canon (Prayer of Consecration, Prayer of Oblation and Prayer for the Church) proves soporific...

Also, the Scottish Liturgy is, well, unknown to all but liturgically-obsessed persons (mea culpa) outside the very small numbers who use it. That's not to say I don't hope to see it used in a Scottish Ordinariate, but it would be to most other Anglicans quite outside their experience.

Fr John Hunwicke

was for nearly three decades at Lancing College; where he taught Latin and Greek language and literature, was Head of Theology, and Assistant Chaplain. He has served three curacies, been a Parish Priest, and Senior Research Fellow at Pusey House in Oxford. Since 2011, he has been in full communion with the See of S Peter. The opinions expressed on this Blog are not asserted as being those of the Magisterium of the Church, but as the writer's opinions as a private individual. Nevertheless, the writer strives, hopes, and prays that the views he expresses are conformable with and supportive of the Magisterium. In this blog, the letters PF stand for Pope Francis.